How Miyamoto impacted Luigi’s jump in Super Mario Bros. 2

As many of you know, Super Mario Bros. 2 wasn’t intended to be a Mario game. Doki Doki Panic morphed into Super Mario Bros. 2 – otherwise known as Super Mario USA – due to the difficulty of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (the “true” Super Mario Bros. 2).

Shigeru Miyamoto impacted Luigi’s jump in Super Mario Bros. 2 that was explained by Hideki Konno in a recent interview. According to Konno, it was Miyamoto who suggested adding in Luigi’s flutter movement. That same movement was used in future Mario titles.

When we made this game, the mother figure, who later became Luigi, since this is a really old game, was made with cel animations. They made this mother figure to jump with gravity not influencing her as much as Mario [Imajin], so Luigi had a really slow jump.

When Mr. Miyamoto came through and evaluated it, he said it doesn’t feel right, let’s add something with his legs, maybe they can each shake like this (making a fast back and forth fluttering movement with his index and middle fingers), and adding in that one element, made it feel just right. Then, later on, that became the mechanic that he was known for.